Abstract:

This research is based on the theory of Community of Inquiry (CoI) (Garrison et al., 2000), a revised CoI Model (Shea, 2010) and a framework for institutional adoption and implementation of blended learning in higher education (Graham, et al. 2010). According to these theoretical basis, a questionnaire including 5 components and 78 questions is designed. The purpose is to assess the quality of blended learning environments as perceived by university students. In total 762 questionnaires from 5 universities are collected. Scale means are compared to examine the quality of blended learning in different dimensions. Namely, Teaching presence, Social presence, Cognitive presence, Learning presence and Institutional presence. Regression analysis is used to investigate the effect of different universities, faculties, grades and genders on the perceived quality of blended learning environments. The results show that Teaching presence has the highest score (Mean=3.82), while Learning presence has the lowest score (Mean=3.40). The results also show that the effect of quality of blended learning is significantly differerent among different universities (p<0.001), whereas the quality of blended learning is not significantly differerent among different faculties and grades (p>0.05). The interpretation of the results and conclusions are discussed in the paper.